Peter Hain: All Ministers are required to affirm the pledge of office before taking up office. This includes a commitment to uphold the rule of law, based, as it is, on the fundamental principles of fairness, impartiality and democratic accountability, including support for policing and the courts, as set out in paragraph 6 of the St. Andrews Agreement.

Peter Hain: We will want Sinn Fein representatives to display full co-operation with policing in every respect, and I know that the hon. Gentleman wants the same thing. For example, that will mean that they will report any crime carried out in their communities, and that they will assist the police in every respect. We also expect them to joining the Policing Board for Northern Ireland and the district policing partnerships. As I said earlier, the executive motion passed by Sinn Fein on 29 December commits that organisation's representatives to all those things, and it is therefore important that we get on with the process.

Maria Eagle: We welcome the landmark report published last month by ProfessorSir George Bain, which recommended improving the quality of education in Northern Ireland through better use of resources, better planning of schools and improved sharing and collaboration. It is a blueprint for excellence in all our schools and will enable all Northern Ireland children to get full value from the efficient use of the massive 60 per cent. real-terms increase in resources committed to education by the Government at a time of falling rolls.

Mark Francois: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday10 January.

David Cameron: Let us be clear about what the Prime Minister has just said: the names of those people have been sitting in box files and he is admitting today that not all their details have been put on the police national computer. The Prime Minister has confirmed that yet again the Government have failed in their centralduty to protect the public. Let us also be clear: of the 525 serious criminals, there are 25 rapists, 29 paedophiles and five murderers. Can the Prime Minister guarantee that none of those very dangerous people has been working with children since their conviction?

David Cameron: Let us be clear: I asked the Prime Minister for a guarantee and he simply cannot give one. His answer underlines just how serious this is. There are rapists, murderers and paedophiles at large in Britain who could have got through the net and could have been working with children in the NHS, in social services or in our schools. The Prime Minister says that the Home Secretary will give a statement, but is not it the fact that the Home Office is part of the problem? Last night, the Home Office said that details of the serious offenders had all been entered into the computer—that is what they said. This morning, a Home Office Minister said that they had not all been entered. Why does the Home Office keep giving such misleading information about such an important matter?

David Cameron: The Prime Minister has completely failed to answer the question. Why is it that last night the Home Office said one thing, but this morning the junior Minister said something completely different? On taking office, the Home Secretary said that he would have a fundamental review of his Department. A hundred days later he said, "Job done", yet we now know that 500 criminals are on the loose and his Department did virtually nothing about it. Is not it the case that if one of those dangerous criminals is found to have been working with vulnerable adults or with children, the Home Secretary will not be able to run away from responsibility for it?

Tony Blair: No, I am afraid that I do not think that that is the right way to proceed on security. Let me just make one thing clear in relation to absconds, which the right hon. Gentleman also mentioned. Absconds from open conditions are at their lowest level since we came to office, and absconds from closed conditions are at their lowest level.  [Interruption.] Let me give himthe facts. The facts are that, prior to 1997, some1,300 prisoners escaped. For the 10 years since 1997, the figure is 137. There have, of course, been several category A escapes, including when he was at the Home Office as an adviser, but there have been no category A escapes since we came to power.

Tony Blair: As for housing, whereas the hon. Gentleman and other Conservative Members are opposing any extension of housing, the shadow Chancellor made the position absolutely clear when he said, in effect, that we need a supply of new housing, but not in his area. I do not think that that is very practical.

Mary Creagh: In Wakefield, we have seen the number of students getting five good GCSE passes increase from 37 per cent. in 1997 to57 per cent. recently. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating students on that great achievement, as well as their teachers and parents and, of course, the schools in Wakefield, which were among the first in the country all to achieve specialist status?

Lembit �pik: Not wishing to be cheeky, I thank the House for being so happy that I am so lucky. I should point out that the other sister is still single.
	On the more serious matter of motor neurone disease, the Prime Minister has received hundreds of letters praising his vision and that of the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to cure MND. Does thePrime Minister know that Britain spends more than 241 million a year on treating those with MND? A cure is therefore also a prudent financial investment, saving literally billions of pounds as well as thousands of lives. When will the Government decide whether to match fund the 7.5 million that the Motor Neurone Disease Association is raising to help cure the deadly disease and create a world free of MND?

Tony Blair: The Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is considering the proposal that the Motor Neurone Disease Association submitted on funding, and I hope that we can respond as soon as possible. I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) on his extraordinary work for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and I hope that he continues with it.

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am delighted that the European Commission, following on from the discussions at the Hampton Court informal summit in October 2005, has today put forward important proposals on climate change and protecting the environment, and on energy security and supply. It is important that we as a country ensure that our energy supply is secure for the long term. In my view, that requires a diverse supply of energy and the decisions that we will have to make when the energy White Paper is published in March are, therefore, very important. I say again that we need to ensure that replacing our nuclear power stations is one important part of the deal. In the past few months, we have signed contracts with, for example, Norway to guarantee 30 per cent. of our gas from Norway in the next few years. We are in the process of replacing our nuclear power stations, but energy security for this country will be as important in the next decade as many of the crucial security issues of past years. If we do not get the decisions right quickly, we will pay a heavy price in future.

John Reid: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement on the backlog of unrecorded overseas crimes committed by British citizens abroad. I apologise to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) for the late arrival of the statement. As he probably saw from the papers being passed along the Front Bench, the inconvenience was mutual.
	I intend to outline the situation up to May 2006when the Association of Chief Police Officers became the lead organisationthe current situation, and the further actions for which I have asked today. No hon. Member should be under the illusion that I do not regard the subject as serious.
	First, let me outline the situation to May 2006. Since 1959, there has been a Council of Europe convention on mutual legal assistance, which established the expectation that the more than 40 member countries would inform each other of the criminal convictions of their citizens while in another member country. That was the position from 1959 until last year. The system had several grave weaknesses.
	First, implementation of the system for exchanging the information was patchy across Europe. Secondly, much of the information was of poor qualityfor example, on some occasions, it constituted just a name. Thirdly, the process for handling the incoming notifications when they arrive in the United Kingdom was fragmented and piecemeal. There were therefore fundamental flaws in both the sending and the receipt of information.
	It was agreed that this situation should be improved at European level, and in 2005 a European Union Council decision made it mandatory for all member states to have a central authority in each country for receiving and sending such information, to counter the fundamental flaws of the prevailing system. In March 2006, it was decided by my predecessorin my view completely correctlythat the central authority for this country would be the Association of Chief Police Officers. I think that I am correct in saying that we were among the first in the European Union to appoint such an authority to improve the exchange of such information. A backlog of 27,500 notifications was passed to ACPO, and its team was operational by May last year.
	Since then, ACPO has sifted through all the approximately 27,500 notifications and carried out a priority risk assessment on them. This identified 540 most serious offenders on the police's own definition. All the notifications relating to the most serious offenders which had enough information to be entered on the police national computer and which were not already on the computer as a result of Interpol work have now been put on it. Together, that means that 260 of the 540 serious notifications are on the police national computer. The remaining 280 cannot be entered on the PNC and are the subject of further inquiries to the notifying country to get more details to try to establish the identity of the offender. I should make it clear that the 280 cases are not necessarily notifications received since May last year or, indeed, since this Government came to office. However, we are having their origin checked.
	I shall now outline the actions that I have asked to be taken. As the House will know, I regard protecting the public as my highest priority, and I know that that view is shared by the whole House. I therefore consider the past failings in the system to be a very serious matter, and I regard the response of my predecessor to have been a correct response to those failings. However, I also believe that the system now operating puts responsibility in the right place.
	I want to express my gratitude to the Association of Chief Police Officers for the action that it has taken and for the assistance that it has given me this morning. I have today met Ministers and my officials, the president of ACPO and the chief executive of the Criminal Records Bureau. I have asked ACPO for an assurance that every one of the more serious offenders that it has identified and on whom there is sufficient information has now been entered on the police national computer. I have been given that assurance.
	Let me now set out the actions that I have taken as a result of the past 24 hours. I have asked the permanent secretary at the Home Office to set up an inquiry into the Home Office's handling of these notifications. This will include determining a chronology of events, the practices and procedures in place at different times, whether appropriate action was taken, and the lessons to be learned. I have asked that every effort be made to complete this enquiry within six weeks.
	In addition, I have asked my officials, ACPO, the CRB and the probation service, in liaison with any other Department should that be necessary, to ensure that all appropriate public protection steps are taken. In particular, I have asked the CRB to check whether there are any disclosures to employers in respect of the most serious offenders who have been identified that ought to be looked at again in the light of that new information. I expect to have that information in a matter of days.
	I have also asked the police and the probation service to ensure that all sex offenders who have been identified through that process are subject to appropriate monitoring in line with the public protection arrangements that would be expected if there had been a conviction in this country.
	Finally, I have asked ACPO and the CRB to accelerate the timetable to process the remainder of the backlogthat is, those cases that have not been identified as serious, which involve less serious offenders. As of this morning, that timetable, due to less serious offenders being involved, was envisaged to be 12 months. I have also asked them, with extra resources, to provide that within three months. They hope to complete it within that time scale.
	As I hope is now clear to the House, this is a problem that was some years in the making. By May 2006, a better system had been established and was operational. I take full responsibility now for ensuring that that new system operates effectively to protect the public and that the lessons of past failings are properly learned.

John Reid: I will deal with the last question first. Of course we consider all ways of improving co-operation, but no one should believe that because systems have been established they will work perfectly, even now.
	To the best of my knowledge, under the new system, all Council of Europe countries have notified us of all offences, and all those offences are being entered on the computer immediately by ACPO.
	I can tell the hon. Gentleman that since I became Secretary of State, none of the cases that have come in have added to the backlog. I accept responsibility for sorting the problem out, but unfortunately for the hon. Gentleman, what I cannot tell him is that I was presiding over it from 1959 until last May. I was not. I will accept responsibility for sorting out the problem, but it has developed over many years. Even now, with the new system, when I ask how many notifications we have received from Spain, for instance, the answer is none. I find it very difficult to believe that we have had no one convicted of offences in Spain. That illustrates some of the problems that we are experiencing, even with a strengthened system.
	We will continue to do what we can, and I accept full responsibility. It is a question of establishing the facts, and I have asked the permanent secretary to do that.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the time scale. I hope and expect that we shall have gone through the backlog of 27,500 less serious cases within a few monthsthree months, I hope, although I cannot absolutely pledge that. He also asked an important question about the retrospective checking of people who are now on the computer but may not have been for a long time. I am also concerned about that, and I have asked the CRB to check and run it through the systems. I trust that the process will not take months or even weeks; I hope to have received the information by the end of this week. I will in any case present a written statement to the House when appropriate, to update Members on what is happening.
	The backlog of 27,500 files that built up at some stage between 1959 and 2006probably from the mid-1990s onwards, but that is part of what I am trying to establishrelates mainly to the 45 or so Council of Europe member states to which the convention on mutual legal assistance relates. That arrangement was even less systematic that the present one. As I have said, there were two flaws. First, the information that came to the United Kingdom was fragmentary, piecemeal and ad hoc, and secondly the system at this end, inthe Home Office, was inadequate to deal with that. Had I known about those failings I would have incorporated them in the report that I gave the Home Affairs Committee, along with the other failings in the system.
	We are remedying those failings now. A huge amount of work is being done by Home Office officials to reform the Home Office, and I praise them for that work. My only regret is that because they did not, apparently, tell me about it at the time, something that happened a considerable time ago is being blamed on officials as if it were happening now. Actually, it is on its way to being remedied now. What has happened is that we have only just found out about a problemthat all of us should perhaps have known about some time ago.

John Reid: Interpol has played an active part. Let me give an exampleit is a rather complex one, but Members demand and expect detailed answers tosuch points. When ACPO received the filessome electronically, others physicallyit sifted through them; it conducted what we would call a triage, sorting them into more serious and less serious offences. Of the 540 more serious offences, it transpired that 149 were already on the police national computer because they had been put on it by Interpol. That means that Interpol had already been playing an active role.
	We will certainly encourage it and other institutions, including the European Union and its member states, to make information available. That is not, however, quite as simple as we would all want it to be. For example, only three countries in Europe have a sex offenders register: the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. Other countries do not protect the public in the way that we do; we have a standard of protection that has been built up over the years. I do not make any exclusive claim for that for the Labour Government. Over a period of years, we have built up a system of protection that is in advance of that of any other country in Europe, but it still has major deficiencies, and we are trying to address them.

James Paice: The Home Secretary referred to the tragedy in Soham in my constituency, and to the fact that if there had been better communication between police forcesthat tragedy might not have happened. However, although that happened five years ago, the Home Secretarysaid that the IMPACTinformation management, prioritisation, analysis, co-ordination and taskingsystem is still being implemented. How much longer will my constituents and other people in this country have to wait before there is a system in place that ensures that everybody who has committed crimes that could mean that they are a threat to children in the future are recorded in a manner that is accessible by those who might be considering employing them?
	We should bear in mind that at the beginning of this process there was already a system in place in Scotland; the Scottish forces had a system that allowed the kind of communication that has been mentioned. Yet the Home Office ignored that and went ahead; it started to implement an IMPACT system which, as the Home Secretary has told us, is still not fully operational five years later.

Andrew Lansley: I am sorry but I do not accept that at all. If the hon. Gentleman reads the record, he will find that I said that there was a falling birth rate when the Government took office, but that it has risen substantially sincea 9 per cent. increase.
	Did we not see in the past couple of weeks just how goodor I should say how badGovernment work force planning is? The departmental internal documents showed how poor it had been. The equivalent documents produced in 2004 were junked within two years, before most of their predictions ever came to pass. The Government are not enabling the service to match the number of midwives to the task in hand. Increasingthe supply of midwives is absolutely central to delivering the objectives on which we all agreefor example, one-to-one care and continuity of care from midwives to mothers and the availability of midwives to enable women to exercise choice and have either home births or named midwife-led care. The supply of midwives is instrumental if those options are to be available.

Grant Shapps: Has my hon. Friend taken into consideration one widespread issue? At my local hospital, the Queen Elizabeth II in Welwyn Garden City, the maternity unit is under threat, yet the review into the closure that is about to take place does not take into account the fact that over the next15 years its catchment area is due for a population increase of 70,000.

Andrew Lansley: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Hon. Members will thank me later for not giving way now, because they will have a chance to make their own speeches.
	I have one more point to make before I leave the subject of the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears)I wonder where she is. Today, she has received a letter from a former chief executive of the Salford and Trafford health authority, in which he says:
	We in Salford are now in a position where, instead of having a local hospital with a full range of secondary hospital services for our people, we face under your government the loss of a significant element of local health care, with probable further consequences for hospital services here in Salford. Your unprincipled intervention in 1998 helped to bring about the unfortunate situation in which we now find ourselves.
	He is referring to the loss of paediatric services from the Hope hospital in 1998. There is a lesson there for Labour Members: the loss of paediatric services leads to the loss of maternity services. Hon. Members representing Huddersfieldnone is presentknow that. That is what is happening in Manchester and elsewhere.
	The position in the east of England is astonishing. A document has been released stating that units dealing with fewer than 3,000 live births a year are not supportable. As a consequence Hinchingbrooke hospital, which covers part of my constituency, the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King's Lynn, the James Paget hospital and West Suffolk hospital may all lose services. In essence, the document states that a maternity unit cannot be maintained with less than 40 hours a week consultant cover on the labour wards, which now requires no fewer than six consultants. It is the working time directive problem all over again. It is astonishing that six obstetric consultants are required to maintain 40 hours a week consultant cover on labour wards. That is not true and it should not be the basis on which the strategic health authority makes its judgments.
	The East of England strategic health authority has the effrontery to say that the lack of consultant cover on the labour wards caused the problems at Northwick Park hospital and that that is the reason why small maternity units have to be closed. When the chief executive of the East of England strategic health authority came here in December, I asked him how many live births there were at Northwick Park hospital in the period after 2002 when 10 tragic maternal deaths occurred. He did not know. The answer is 5,000. What is important is that the unit is well run, that the consultants are on the labour ward and work as a team with the midwives, and that the unit does not have to deal with an unsustainable number of births. Northwick Park hospital was affected by, among other things, the fact that the Central Middlesex hospital had shut and births were transferred to Northwick Park. What will happen in the east of England if the Hinchingbrooke unit or the West Suffolk hospital unit is shut and all the births are sent to Peterborough and Cambridge, or if the facilities at the Queen Elizabeth hospital are closed and patients are sent to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital? The consultant-led maternity units will be subjected to unsustainable pressures, resulting in all the problems that were seen at Northwick Park, yet the East of England strategic health authority is trying to use lack of consultant cover as the reason for shutting maternity units down. I know why the strategic health authority is doing what it is doing: there is a240 million deficit and budgets must be cut. The authority believes that economies of scale are automatic, but in practice they are not.
	There is not any evidence. That is the point that I am trying to make to the Government. That is the point in the motion. The motion is not an aggressive attempt to expose the Government's failures; it is an attempt to get the Government to ensure that the NHS across the country takes time to think. The Government have started a research programme, to be completed in 2009, to discover the evidence on the scale of maternity units that are safe and on outcomes in different types of maternity setting. How can we secure the number of midwives that we need to meet the Government's commitment to achieving one-to-one care by 2009? All those things are necessary and there should be a timetable through to 2009, but there is none. What is happening in Manchester, the east of England, Redditch and other places is that financial deficits and the pressures of the European working time directive are causing maternity units to be shut down.
	Restrictions are being put on the choice, access and opportunities that mothers should have to receive the maternity service that is in their best interests. Today, in our motion, we call on the Government to stop and thinknot to stop change everywhere but to stop and thinkand then to proceed on the basis of the evidence, not of the financial pressures. I urge the House to support our motion.

Gregory Barker: Research from southern California, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) referred in his speech, has been cited by the PCT and the hospital trust as a reason for closing one of the maternity units at Eastbourne or Hastings. Does the Secretary of State accept that that research from the early 1990s is valid for regular, UK maternity closures of, for example, 2,000 deliveries?

Patricia Hewitt: I prefer to take my advice about consultant cover for hospital births from theBritishRoyal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I shall have a little more to say about that in a moment when I turn in more detail to the issue of clinical standards.
	Like most Members on both sides of the House, I still remember the midwives and the consultant obstetrician who helped my husband and me with our two children. That was about 20 years ago, but millions of families around the country have every reason to be grateful to NHS staff for the superb quality of care they give at a critical point in people's lives.
	All of us should be proud of NHS maternity services. Women are generally happy with them; according to my Department's latest maternity survey, eight in 10 women tell us that they are happy with the care they received during birth. That is down to the superb hard work and dedication of thousands of NHS midwives and other clinicians and professionals. It is down to the increased investmentmore than1.5 billion a yearthat we are making in NHS maternity services. It is down to the fact that the number of midwives has increased by about 2,500 over the past 10 years, which is of course reflected in the fact that childbirth is probably safer now, for both mothers and their babies, than at any time in the past.
	As many of us know, in some parts of the country services are not only good, not only safe, but outstanding: they match the best in the world.

Patricia Hewitt: I want to make some more progress.
	The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) and I agree that we need to do more. In parts of the country, there are more births, more older births, more complex births, more assisted conceptions and more babies born prematurelythanks to the advances in medical technology more premature babies and babies with profound disabilities survive. That is a great advance for human progress, but all those changes in society and in medicine mean that maternity services need to change, too.
	As we stressed in our national service framework, we know well that giving birth does not need medical intervention for a high proportion of women. Many of those women would much rather give birth at home or in a community setting, supported by a midwife.

Andrew Gwynne: I was a premature babyI was born at St. Mary's hospital in Manchester some32 years agoso I support what the Secretary of State says. Is not the good news story of the reconfiguration the fact that central Manchester will have a state-of-the-art facility for the whole county of Greater Manchester, which we do not have at present?

Patricia Hewitt: Opposition Members keep saying, Just do it, but they may not have noticed, given their extraordinary hostility to the European Union, thatan individual country cannot simply overturn the judgment of the European Court on such matters. We will therefore continue to make services safer, and to bring down doctors' working hours. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) said, that is better for doctors and safer for the patients for whom they care. As we bring working hours down, initially to 56 hours from 2009 onwards, and then to 48 hours, there will be an impact on maternity services. Of course, the NHS has to take that issue into account, but working hours are not the only factor, as the Manchester clinician whom I quoted made crystal clear.
	I want to make it crystal clear that when the final decision is made in Greater Manchester on the reconfiguration of services, it will be made on clinical grounds, and on the basis of what is best for patientsfor women and their babies. It will not be made on political grounds, either there or elsewhere.

Patricia Hewitt: I will not give way; I will make some more progress. Earlier, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred to the reorganisation in Calderdale and Huddersfield. In that case, there was consensus across the local NHS that two consultant-led units should be replaced by one consultant-led unit and one midwife-led unit. There was considerable consternation among local people, particularly in Huddersfield, about whether the midwife-led unit proposed for the area would provide good quality, safe care. That issue was referred to me by the overview and scrutiny committee, which plays a critical part in the statutory consultation that we have insisted should take place locally when there is to be any substantial change in services.
	The panel made it absolutely clear that the standards to which local clinicians worked were set by the royal colleges themselves, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which says that dedicated consultant cover should be available for a minimum of 40 hours during the working week. It wants that to be increasedrightly, in my viewto60 hours by the end of 2008.

Paul Rowen: On the Greater Manchester reconfiguration, especially the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, my hon. Friend may be aware that the Government have invested considerable sums at the Rochdale infirmary25 million seven years agoand a similar figure at Fairfield hospital, yet those units are to be closed anda brand new unit, which I am told will cost over40 million, will have to be built in north Manchester. That is meant to satisfy a pledge made by the Prime Minister when Booth Hall was shut. It has nothing to do with planning properlyit is more about keeping past promises.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful for that intervention. We see examples all over the country of investment being overtaken by decisions to move in a different direction, thereby wasting money. Clearly, not all the money that has been invested in the health service has been spent wisely.
	We do not oppose reconfiguration per seit is sometimes necessarybut because so much of the NHS is mired in debt that it is inevitable that judgments will often be driven by the requirement to clear it. These decisions should be taken locally, based on objective judgments on how to improve the serviceand with genuine local accountability, doing more than merely paying lip service to involving local communities in the sometimes tough choices that have to be made.
	In its report before Christmas, the Select Committee found that in a desperate attempt to recover financial balance soft targets are often disproportionately affected. It referred particularly to mental health services, to support for voluntary organisations and, crucially, to staff training. There is no doubt that cuts in staff training are affecting maternity services. A recent survey by the Royal College of Midwives found that trusts were cutting training budgets, with one in five reporting that entire budgets had gone and the same proportion saying that three quarters of the budget had gone.
	It is not only training budgets that are suffering. The RCM survey found that two thirds of units surveyed were under-staffed; that one in five had lost staff in the past year; that trusts were increasingly relying on maternity support workers, not qualified midwives, to fill the gaps; and that trusts are employing fewer newly qualified midwives than a year ago. Those are the midwives recruited to training programmes three years ago because of staff shortages; every one of them who does not become employed in the health service effectively costs the taxpayer 45,000 in wasted training costs, apart from the cost to the future of the student who fails to get a job. The survey also found that fewer students are starting training courses because places have been cut. As a result, there will be insufficient newly qualified midwives to replace those retiring, let alone the need to tackle the growing pressures on the service.
	Midwife numbers are down in the past year. The Government tell us that in the period of their office numbers have increased, and I accept that, but worryingly, the trend is now in the opposite direction. Significant numbers of midwife-led services have closed or are threatened with closure. The RCM highlights the fact that we have an ageing work force with increasing numbers planning to retire in the next few years.

Norman Lamb: Yesit is important to get the research so that we can make judgments on an objective basis. It is also worth considering practice elsewhere, as I will explain later.
	The other pressure that is developing is that increasing numbers of women over the age of 40 are becoming pregnant. Between 1991 and 2003, the number of women conceiving over the age of 40 almost doubled. Midwifery for those women is more demanding. More teenage pregnancies also have an impact on the service.
	Now we come to the Government's manifesto commitments. The manifesto said that by 2009
	all women will have choice over where and how they have their baby and what pain relief to use.
	It also stated:
	we want every woman to be supported by the same midwife throughout her pregnancy.
	The brutal truth is that choice, far from being enhanced, is being compromised by the cuts that we have witnessed over the past 12 months.
	I should also mention the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services, which appears to be increasingly marginalised. It was published two years ago, and yet there is still no delivery plan for implementation of its maternity standard element. The Government's ambition is worthy, but it is undermined by financial crisis, delay and a determination to drive everything from the centre. Last September, the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson, declared that there would be up to 60 reconfigurations of NHS services, determined not locally but nationally, affecting every strategic health authority in the land. He specifically identified accident and emergency, paediatrics and maternity services as areas ripe for reform.
	Let me deal briefly with the case for reconfiguring services. I accept that difficult choices sometimes have to be made. Women with high risk pregnancies must have access to the expertise necessary. Women falling into that category include those having twins, those with a past obstetric history, those with premature deliveries, those suffering high blood pressure and those with other clinical problems such as diabetes. They need the care provided in specialist units, and we will fail them if we do not ensure that they have access to them. That does not mean, however, that we should back away from giving women a real, informed choice.
	In developing maternity services we should be willing to learn lessons from other countries. Holland's maternity health statistics consistently rank among the best in the world. It has a national policyjust like the policy in the Labour manifestothat guarantees every woman a midwife from the beginning of pregnancy through the first year after birth. Thirty to 40 per cent. of births there take place in the home under the care of a midwife. That option is proven to be safe and cost effective, and women choose it. Let us compare the figure with the tiny percentage of women who have home births in this country. Other methods of doing things appear to work and be cost effective, and the choice should be made available in a positive way to women in the UK.
	It is remarkable that, in Holland, caesarean births have been kept below 10 per cent.compared with our 23 per cent.leading to massive cost savings and a better outcome for women. That shows that we can reconfigure without necessarily imposing an additional burden on the NHS budget.
	We should learn lessons from elsewhere and be willing to confront difficult decisions to ensure the best care and to empower women. Decisions should not be driven by crisis management because of the legal obligation to clear unsustainable debt.
	Our vision is of offering genuine, informed choices to womenhome care, midwife-led services, hospital deliveryabout where and how they give birth; making decisions locally, thus involving local communities in delivering the best framework of care; and ensuring that we have the work force necessary to realise that vision.

Barbara Keeley: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the issues that needs to be considered in the final stage of the consultation is the need to keep services as proximate as possible tothe most deprived communities. As I have made clear, the need for the services in Salford is caused by the high birth rate and the high incidence of very low birth weight babies, and it makes absolute sense, given the difficulties of public transport in our conurbations, to keep these services as local as possible.
	In summary, Salford MPs have argued consistently over many months to keep the local maternity and neo-natal services at Hope hospital, and we have argued this on clinical grounds. I have supported the Government's policies on the NHS and on the need to reconfigure services, but I also support the view that the best option will be to retain services at Hope, because that is the quickest and cheapest way of achieving the aims set out in the consultation, which we endorsed.
	Salford city council's community health and social care scrutiny committee has been asked to scrutinise the proposal for change made by the joint committee of PCTs locally. The decision may then be referred to the Secretary of State, who can refer the matter to the independent configuration panel. This is an example of the process working as it should when there is disagreement during a consultation. Given that I support the need to reconfigure services, I will support the decision made at the end of the process, but I believe that it is right, while the process is going on, for me as an MP and for other Salford MPs to continue to press the views of local people.

Tony Baldry: I fully appreciate the concerns of the hon. Members for Eccles (Ian Stewart) and for Worsley (Barbara Keeley).
	Having heard the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears) on the radio on 28 December, I wrote to her. I would like to share what I wrote to her with the House:
	I write, having heard you speak on 'The World at One' today on, amongst other things, explaining your decision in campaigning on the 'picket lines' last week in Salford protesting about the withdrawal of maternity care in your constituency under an NHS reorganisation.
	I think any Member of Parliament would understand your desire to represent the strong feelings of your constituents, notwithstanding your position as a member of the Cabinet and Chair of the Labour Party.
	As I am sure you will understand, there are sizeable numbers of communities across England who are feeling equally strongly about proposed reorganisation of hospital services.
	In my constituency, the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust have been consulting on proposals which would lead to the serious downgrading of, amongst other things, what is now a consultant-led maternity service, to what would be the largest midwife-led maternity unit in the UK.
	Furthermore, whereas I would imagine that in Manchester the distances between the various maternity services that are being reorganised in the city are comparatively short, downgrading of the maternity services at the Horton Hospital in Banbury would mean expectant mothers and others having to travel at least26 miles, and depending on where exactly they live, potentially considerably further, to get to the maternity unit at the JR in Oxford.
	You are, of course, fortunate that as a Cabinet Minister you can raise your concerns directly with Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Healthindeed, I see that you are quoted in today's 'Guardian' as saying 'I have raised the issue ... with the Health Secretary several times.'
	Obviously it is much more difficult for Opposition MPs such as myself, to be heard by the Secretary of State.
	On the 16 January, the All Party Local Hospital Group is organising a rally at Westminster involving campaigners from hospitals across England and hopefully there will be a team there from Salford.
	I appreciate that Ministers have extremely busy diaries, but I very much hope, given the stance you have taken on NHS reorganisation in your own patch, that you might be willing to come and meet campaigners from the 'Keep the Horton General' campaign. This is a broadly based, community campaign, reflecting views of all political parties locally, and is ably led by George Parish, a longstanding local Labour councillor.
	If you were able to spare time to talk to campaigners from Banbury, it would be much appreciated and I think you would then be in a position to make it clear to Patricia Hewitt that there is widespread opposition in England to downgrading and closure of key services at General Hospitals throughout England.
	I have no complaint about a Cabinet Minister breaching collective responsibility, but there should be evenness in this matter. I hope that, on 16 January, Health Ministers and others will come to hear the concerns of many hospitals throughout the country.
	At the Horton hospital in Banbury, there is a proposal to downgrade a perfectly good consultant-led service to what will be the largest midwife-led unit in the country. Members of the House might think, Well, we as Members of Parliament would say these things, wouldn't we? However, I would just like to share with Ministers the united submission made by85 GPs to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust:
	We remain opposed to the proposals on the grounds of safety, sustainability and the reduction in access to basic health care and choice for our patients, which will affect especially the most vulnerable. We have little confidence in the process of 'consultation' and the spirit in which it has been conducted.
	These proposals are unsafe....Under the proposed model mothers who may fail to progress or show signs of foetal distress in the second stage of labour, or who have prolapsed cord or haemorrhage, would require very rapid transfer to Oxford. Given the numbers involved this would carry significant risk and would be inhumane.
	It is pretty telling that those 85 GPs use the words unsafe and inhumane to describe the proposals.
	The submission continues:
	There would be an increase in the burden of responsibility on midwives and ambulance crews. Legal claims following incidents where there was harm to the mother or baby might be very costly to settle.
	Babies born in need of immediate resuscitation would incur a transit time of approximately one hour. The idea that paediatric cover could be provided safely from Oxford in these circumstances is false and dangerous.

Tony Baldry: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The danger in the Government's proposals, and in the way in which the Government and certain trusts are driving them, is that we will have centralisation without the previous infrastructure. Mothers in labour will often have to travel considerable distances without new infrastructure having been put in place.
	As the 85 GPs from Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire say:
	We submit the opinion of Professor James Drife who wrote in the BMJ...about the shortfalls of midwife led units.... It accords with recent publications by NICE on the safety of such units...We are not reassured and maintain that a midwife led unit with a delivery rate of 450
	babies
	per annum, which is 25 miles away from the nearest obstetrician and paediatrician, is not safe. Through no fault of the midwives working in such a unit, GPs would have to consider the wisdom of recommending mothers to this service, numbers would drop further and the service would soon become non viable ... A midwife led maternity unit, possibly lacking the confidence of local GPs, may well wither. Kidderminster had to close its unit due to excessive neonatal mortality (6 avoidable deaths in under2 years). Increasing concern about such units is being expressed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and NICE.

John Baron: Our debate on maternity services has been good, albeit brief, and I congratulate Members on their contributions, in which they expressed concern about the future of maternity services. The debate is timely, as many maternity units throughout the country face closure.
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) raised the issue of deficits and the link to closures, as highlighted by the Health Committee; he was right to do so. The hon. Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley) made a thoughtful contribution. She said that although she does not support the option recommended locally, which will result in the loss of services at Salford royal hospital, she will stand by the decision. However, she also rightly stated that services should be based near to where need is greatest, and she made the point that Salford has one of the highestthe third highest, I thinkbirth rate in the country.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made a good speech. He mentioned the effect of staff shortages and cuts in his part of Hertfordshire. He revealed that his local trust is making cuts and closing services because of financial deficits. He also commented on the lack of choice in how and where women can give birth.
	The hon. Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) talked about the implications of paediatric services in his area being moved away. He confirmed the powerful case made by Dr. Greatorex in his letter of many years ago; he stated that, under what he called the Dobson settlement, he felt he had been given an assurance that the remaining services at Hope hospital in Salford would be protectedan assurance given to him by a former Secretary of State. However, with option A now being chosen, that appears unlikely.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) referred powerfully to a survey of 85 local GPs who used the word inhumane in describing proposed changes to maternity services in his area. He raised the important issue of the distance to the nearest services in considering the well-being of patients, and he reminded Members that there is oftennot only in his constituency, but in constituencies throughout the countrya contradiction between the views of local people and GPs and the decisions made by primary care trusts, which are in many cases under financial pressure and therefore wish to centralise services.
	Our brief debate has, at heart, been about three key issues: first, the inability of the NHS to offer genuine choice, where clinically appropriate, to women about how and where they give birth; secondly, the loss of much-loved local services as part of reconfigurations taking place in the absence of any evidence-based model for safe and accessible care, which is a point that the hon. Member for Worsley made; and, thirdly and overarching the other issues, the shortage of midwives in the NHS at a time of financial difficulty and deficits.
	The Government often accuse the Conservative party of scaremongeringwhich is somewhat predictable, but never mind. However, for evidence of the impending crisis in the maternity work force we need look no further than the survey of the heads of midwifery published this week by the Royal College of Midwives, which has been referred to. Two thirds reported that their unit was understaffed, while one in five claimed that midwifery staffing establishment had been cut. I ask the Minister to say in his summation whether that is scaremongering.
	In the past year alone, the overall head count of midwives working in the NHS fell, while the number of whole-time equivalent midwivesthe best measure for the availability of a midwife at any single point in timeincreased by a mere 5 per cent. between 1997 and 2005. That has been happening during a period when the birth rate has been rising rapidly, and the maternity case mix is becoming more complex as women choose to give birth both earlier and later in life.
	The jobs crisis in maternity leads to existing midwives being overworked and, sometimes, unable to cope. Indeed, the RCM has said publicly that midwives are struggling to provide good care. Does the Minister believe that to be scaremongering?
	There is little doubt that jobs and training posts are being cut for short-term financial reasons, due to deficits. An analysis of the financial outturn figures published in  Hansard on 9 October 2006 clearly shows that three quarters of the midwife-led maternity units under threat are operated by trusts with financial deficits. But this short-term fix is highly irresponsible given the ageing profile of the midwifery work force and the impact on newly qualified midwives unable to get that all-important first job in the health service.
	With the RCM now claiming that NHS trusts are increasingly reliant on maternity care assistants and employing fewer newly qualified midwives, what a betrayal is that of midwives who were encouraged to join the profession to address long-term shortages and have been trained at a cost to the taxpayer of 45,000 but now cannot find that first post. Again, does the Minister believe that to be scaremongering?

Ivan Lewis: The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) referred to the closure of the unit at North Manchester general hospital, which I know to be absolute nonsense.
	For some parents, the level of professional and community intervention should be and will be minimal. For others, it will be more intensive to ensure that every child gets the best possible start in life and every parent has the chance to be the best they can. Our 10 health-led parenting project sites will test out a new approach, which has the potential to make a radical difference to a child's development and thus their lifelong opportunities.
	The Secretary of State and I will shortly make proposals to support the NHS to deliver our historic promise of real maternity choice for all parents by 2009. Professionals and managers should seek to reorganise services in a way that is consistent with the aims of safety, quality and choice, based on local knowledge and follows proper and authentic engagement with the local community.
	I want to deal with specific contributions to the debate. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) described reconfigurations driven by finance. The requirement for the NHS to get its books into balance is one for which we make no apology, and the reconfiguration that I know best began in Manchester about two and a half or three years ago. It has absolutely nothing to do with any financial challenges that the NHS faces at the moment. The Liberal Democrats say that we should not oppose reconfiguration per sethere is a first for the Liberal Democrats: not opposing things for the sake of it, whatever the best interests of the wider population.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley) made a good case for Hope hospital and the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) talked about the temporary suspension of antenatal classes for first-time mums. I certainly cannot intervene in that, but I will write to him to find out further details about why that happened. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that, under the funding formula advocated by his Front Benchers, his constituents would be 9.2 per cent. a head worse off than under the current NHS funding formula.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) has a longstanding and impressive track record of campaigning for the development of paediatric and maternity services and their maintenance at Hope hospital. He has been a passionate and powerful advocate in that context both publicly and privately. My hon. Friend's call for it to be referred to the Secretary of State depends on the decisions taken by the overview and scrutiny committees of the individual local authorities affected by the decisions. I know that he has had discussions with his own overview and scrutiny committee in Salford.
	The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) is concerned about reconfiguration. There is a process and professionals will make their views known locally. The overview and scrutiny committee will have an opportunity to make its judgment; if it is unhappy, it has the option under the legislation to refer the matter to the Secretary of State.
	In conclusion, real hypocrisy in the NHS is claiming support for it at every opportunity, while voting against extra investment. It is championing local decision making and operational independence, while portraying every change to local services as a cut. It is promising to match NHS spending, while having an economic policy that will require millions of pounds of NHS cuts. Real hypocrisy is criticising the Government's work force strategy when there are 33,000 more doctors and 85,000 more nurses since 1997. Opposition Members have no shame.
	We should contrast that with the present Government's policies on the NHS. By 2009, every woman will have choice over where and how they have their babies and what pain relief to use. We want every woman to be supported throughout her pregnancy by a named midwife. By 2008, no one will have to wait for an operation more than 18 weeks from the date of their first GP visit to the door of the operating theatre. By 2008, there will be 2,500 children centres; and there will be 3.500 by 2010.
	It was the Labour party that created the NHS, it was the Labour party that was asked by the people to save it in 1997, and it is the Labour Government who, fittingly, are charged with its transformation. The NHS is the glue that binds the values of the Labour party and the British people. We have no need to prove that the NHS is safe in our hands, only the awesome responsibility of ensuring that the NHS completes the journey from a third-world health service in 1997 to a world-class health service in time for its 60th anniversary in 2008.

Alan Duncan: A first step it may be, but the trouble is that there are many more steps to be taken, and with greater certainty than in December.
	Part of the remaining speculation centres around the Post Office card account. That was designed to be a very simple form of account that can only have benefit payments made into it, but it is used by more than4 million people, and transactions made with it account for 10 per cent of a sub-postmaster's net pay.
	For most of 2006, the Government's message was that POCA would be scrapped in 2010. In December, the Secretary of State came to the House and promised some sort of replacement card account, although he gave no assurance that the Department for Work and Pensions would end the pressure that it has put on vulnerable benefit recipients to give up their card account. Of course, the U-turn in the face of pressure from Conservative Members was welcome. However, the Secretary of State created further uncertainty by announcing that the operation of the successor system would be put out to tender.
	If the Post Office's ability to bid for the contract is hampered by speculation and uncertainty, pensioners may pick up their money from Paypoint outlets in a few years, with enormous consequent losses to the Post Office. The stark truth is that the very plan that the Secretary of State announced to enhance the post office network could prove to be the Trojan horse that poses the greatest threat to it.
	The Government must recognise that continuing uncertainty is doing great harm to the prospects of a sustainable future for the post office network.

Alan Duncan: Yes to the hon. Lady's proposal?
	Back in December, the Government tried to sweeten the bitter pill of post office closures by claiming that their new access criteria would ensure that the no one would live further than three miles from a post office. However, as Age Concern has pointed out, those access criteria take no account of the availability of public transport to reach alternative services. Nor do they take account of the number of benefit recipients in a given area who rely on a post office for access to their money.
	The setting of access criteria has been suggested in the past. However, in 2000, the Prime Minister's own strategy unit rejected the idea, saying that
	numerical access criteria could well undermine the Government's policy rather than strengthen it.
	The strategy unit went on to point out that such a commitment would not be worth the paper that it was written on. It made it clear that
	it would be possible for the Post Office to close down two-thirds of its rural outlets whilst still ensuring that 99 per cent. of people in rural areas lived within 3 miles of a post office.
	Perhaps Ministers simply forgot to mention this fact in their policy document. In fact, there are a number of things missing from the Government's statement on the future of the Post Office. Most importantly, for instance, are radical proposals such as those that the Conservatives set out in October, to provide the essential reforms needed to give the post office network a genuine and sustainable future.

Alan Duncan: I totally agree with the hon. Lady, and I am happy to echo her comments. One cannot stress often enough that the issue of post office closures is as much an urban issue as a rural one.
	What the Government should have announced in December was, first, that they would give sub-postmasters greater freedom to find new business opportunities. At present, Royal Mail writes clauses into sub-postmasters' contracts forbidding them to take on certain business opportunities which might transform their finances, if only they had the chance. The long-term future of the network will be best secured if the Post Office is opened up to new markets and new customers. Just as many pubs that were tied to one brewery are now free houses, so post offices should be released from their ties and be allowed to offer a broader range of services.
	We recognise the fantastic service provided by sub-postmasters to their local communities. They tell us that they do not want to depend on subsidy, but instead want the opportunity to do more business and serve their customers, yet that is exactly what the Government are denying them. Conservatives would rewrite the sub-postmasters' contract, allowing them to provide a greater range of products and services, including private mail services. Will the Secretary of State give the same assurance today?
	Secondly, the Government should be following the lead of Conservatives in encouraging local councils to see what services they can provide through post offices and whether they could use the post office network in their area better to engage with local residents. There have been a number of plans and pilot schemes aimed at using post offices as one-stop shops to provide a wide range of information and services from local government and other local bodies, but the Government, instead of extending the range of service that they allow councils to offer, restrict it. Will the Secretary of State undertake to look at that again?
	What about using post offices as a hub for government information? We are looking at how we can provide for people who have concerns about a range of Government services to be able to access advice and answers at their post office. The Government have talked about doing that, but the delivery, as so often, has added up to nothing. May I ask the Secretary of State also to look at that again?
	On both sides of the House, there is an understanding that huge social benefits accrue from the post office network, but it is less well documented that there are clear economic benefits too. Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell the House what research his Department has done on that issue. I understand that the Treasury did a study and found that for each pound of support that the Government have put into the network, there has been more than 2 of economic benefit to the local area.
	The Department of Trade and Industry should be thinking that if it can make the conditions right for more post offices to be successful, it will reap the economic benefits. Instead, the best that we have seen from the Secretary of State is a plan for the management of the decline of the post office network.

Alistair Darling: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	acknowledges the important role that post offices play in local communities, particularly in rural and deprived urban areas; recognises that the business environment in which Royal Mail and the post office network are operating is undergoing radical change, with more and more people choosing new electronic ways to communicate, pay bills and access Government services; applauds the Government's record of working closely with Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd. and sub-postmasters to help them meetthese challenges with an unprecedented investment of more than 2 billion made by the Government in supporting the network since 1999; endorses the Government's firm commitment to ensuring the continuation of the network, while acknowledging the widely held view that its present size is unsustainable; supports the Government's approach of allowing Royal Mail the freedom to respond to future commercial challenges and opportunities, and in particular enabling Post Office Limited to determine the future shape of the network within clear Government rules governing criteria for local access, a requirement to develop new outreach services, full public consultation on proposals for each affected area and a continuing commitment to social network payments by the Government to reflect sub-post offices' social role; and welcomes the Government's renewed commitment to allowing the public to get their pensions and benefits in cash from post offices if they choose to do so, including a successor to the Post Office card account when the current contract expires in 2010..
	I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the proposals that I made in December, which have led to the consultation that is under way. I dare say that there will be many other opportunities for the House to debate them further. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) could not be with us on the day that I made my statement, so it was interesting to hear for the first time what his policy is.
	May I say out the outset that these are difficult decisions? The post office network is facing a difficult time. I take as my starting point the conclusion of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, chaired by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) who is in his place, that there is a widespread belief that the present network of 14,500 branches is unsustainable. The National Federation of SubPostmasters itself has said that.
	When post offices have seen fewer and fewer people coming through their front doors over a number of years, with the associated loss of business, the House and any Government must consider what is to be done. Do we let closures continue on a haphazard basis, or do we try to manage the situation to provide support for the post office network while at the same time taking the action that we believe is necessary to put the network on a stable and long-term footing?

Alistair Darling: The whole thrust of my statement acknowledged that the changes were taking place and made it clear that there would be financial support for the Post Office amounting to 1.7 billion between now and 2011, recognising that the post office network had lost business.
	This is the difference between our approach and the Tory approach. We recognise that profound changes are taking place in post office business and are prepared to provide financial support to enable the Post Office to adapt to that, but we also recogniseas do many others, including the Federation of SubPostmastersthat the present network, at 14,500, is unsustainable. We are proposing a reduction of about 2,500, which would still leave the Post Office with a network greater than that of all British banks.

Mark Pritchard: With respect, the Secretary of State's rationale appears to me to be perverse. He is trying to justify the massive cull of post offices on the basis that it is an organised cull rather than a disorganised one, even though the former will take place at three times the rate of the latter.
	What would the Secretary of State say to sub-postmasters Mr. and Mrs. Sodhota of Edgmond, Shropshire? They are doing a marvellous job of running that village post office, and also of running another part-time post office in Lilleshall. The Secretary of State has withdrawn business such as the TV licence business and the post office card account business, so what would he say to them about how they should invest for their futures and that of their children, and for the futures of the villagers they serve?

Alistair Darling: I entirely agree that there are many sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses throughout the country who do a sterling job not only in carrying out their own business, but often above and beyond that in providing other services and forms of support.
	I will discuss the post office card account shortly. I have said that we need to replace it, and that is why we want to put in place a new contract from 2010. The decision on the licence fee was taken by the BBC. It did not take it because there was a lack of network; it explicitly stated at the time that the reason was that large cost savings would accrue to itand, like any other organisation, the BBC has to take account of costs.
	On the hon. Gentleman's general point, I have explained time and again what has been happening over the past few years. People have chosen to conduct their business in different ways, and that changing behaviour has taken a toll on the Post Office. I want to make sure that we manage that process, and that we do not just leave things to chance. We should carry on supporting the Post Office, both directly through financial support and indirectly through measures such as the POCA and encouraging the Post Office to get other business in other ways. That is the best way of making sure that we get a national network.
	It is not only me who is saying that. I have had many discussions with the federation concerned in this matter. One thing that its representatives said to me prior to my announcement was, For goodness sake, don't just walk away from this and do nothing. You've got to make sure that we have a chance of getting a coherent national network. I believe that our proposals do that.

Andrew Gwynne: I welcome what my right hon. Friend says about considering a more managed approach. However, in Denton, in my constituency, the post office franchise was with the Co-op, and when the Co-op decided to terminate the franchise, the town was left without a post office for three months. A post office then opened in a new building, but that has remained a building site for12 months, which is completely unacceptable to my constituents. When we consider the managed approach, can we please tighten up the franchising arrangements so that the situation in Denton that my constituents have had to put up with does not occur elsewhere?

Alistair Darling: They can get the pay point, butfor reasons that I set out earlierthey cannot use a pay point that competes with other business. If the Post Office has entered into a contract to sell travel insurance or to allow people to pay certain bills, I can see why it would not like to have a competitor sitting alongside. As I said, I am prepared to look at any proposal to enable the Post Office to get more business, but I want to avoid ending up with a situation in which its financial stability is undermined by someone who is able to cherry pick a particular bit of its business. That possibility would throw into question the viability of the rest of the Post Office network. We need to remember that much of that network is not likely to include post offices with valuable contracts; it is more likely to include those that are fairly well used.

Susan Kramer: Because it is the best way, I have left that until last, but I shall deal with that proposal, which offers a viable future for both Royal Mail and the post office network.
	Let us consider the value of post offices. The New Economics Foundation has demonstrated that each post office saves local businesses approximately 270,000 per annum, and that, as it circulates, every10 of income earned by a post office generates 16.20 for the local economy. That symbiosis that others have mentioned is key and must be central to the planning of the post office network.
	All organisations need to change to meet the times, but if we started to think of the post office as having potential rather than as a fading organisation, the whole psychology would change.

Susan Kramer: My hon. Friend points out an anachronism of which I was not aware.
	There is good news, as one party at least has put together a coherent plan that offers a future for the post office networka comprehensive policy that deals with Royal Mail and the Post Office. First, the two must be separated. They are not the same business and there is no reason that they have to ride in tandem. The post office network belongs permanently within the public sector. It needs to be free to develop its business without being trammelled by Royal Mail and Royal Mail's own and rather different objectives.
	We propose that, having made that separation,25 per cent. of Royal Mail goes into an employee trust so that shares are effectively owned by the employees to provide the necessary incentives; 25 per cent. remains in public hands with Royal Mail, because with its universal distribution requirement there is a public service element, though it is a relatively small one; and 45 per cent. of the shares are sold on the open market. That yields about 2 billion in addition to the subsidy programmes that the Government have suggested, to put into an endowment to rebuild the network. That initial money will allow training, development and marketing to be put in place and will allow the network to be rebuilt.

Shona McIsaac: I certainly think that the difference between what the previous Government did and what we are suggesting as the way forward for the future is the social aspect of the post office in communities. We will try to ensure that we have that coverage nation wide in the network. That is very welcome. I hope that the Conservative party will support that aspect of the proposals.
	I am going to mention another point as regards the post office card account. Of all the issues raised in my postbag, that came up the most. People were very concerned about the possibility of the post office card account ending. The announcement that there would be a replacement card account was therefore welcome, and it has eased many of my constituents' fears.
	I would like the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider ways of linking in credit unions to the future replacement for the card account. The areas in my constituency with high post office usage are often those with fairly high levels of deprivation. There are still people in those areas who do not have access to bank accounts because of their credit ratings, and the North East Lincolnshire Credit Union is working to keep those people away from loan sharks. Links with credit unions therefore have immense potential for tackling financial and social exclusion in the future.
	In northern Lincolnshire, my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) and for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and I have always worked closely with our post office network. We heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe that my parliamentary neighbour and regional Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, worked with one of his parish councils to have a sub-post office reopened. That shows how we can work together for the future of the network.
	I was astonished, however, by the support from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) for the idea that more local council services could be delivered via the sub-post office network. Perhaps he might like to have a word with his Tory colleagues on North Lincolnshire council. While my neighbouring MPs have worked with our Labour colleagues on the council, his colleagues voted against extendingthe community use of sub-post offices and theLocal Government Association position, in complete contradiction to the policy he espoused today. That is just another example of today's Tories saying one thing and doing another.

Graham Stuart: This summer, I had the pleasure of spending several days cycling around my constituency. I went from village to village, and the post office was, of course, the heart of the community in those villages. As I travelled along the coast to places such as Aldbrough, Mappleton and down to Withernsea, time and again people told me of the importance of the post office to their way of life and their local community.
	Such small rural villages have had to put up with a lot since 1997. Community hospital facilities have either been closed or had services heavily reduced. Bus services are inadequate, inconveniencing the elderly and those without transport. Farmers' incomes have collapsed, and the single farm payment scheme has descended into chaos due to Government mismanagement. Rural areas feel neglected and question the Government's understanding of the countryside. Post office closures are, therefore, about as welcome as the Foreign Secretary at a Young Farmers dinner.
	It is difficult to overstate the importance of the post office to small, remote towns and villages. The poor, the old and the ill particularly depend on it for a wide range of services. As Members in all parts of the House have often said, sub-postmasters act as a focal point for the community. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) mentioned an Age Concern report that showed that most elderly people in rural areas regard the post office as a lifeline. That report also found that 56 per cent.more than halfof such people thought that post office closures would lead to them being isolated. The current Government have already been the author of 4,000 such closures at three times the previous rate, and they are now proposing 2,500 even more swiftly than before.
	The Government's mismanagement of the post office network has had a devastating impact on such communities. In my constituency, eight post office branches have been lost since 1999, and following the Secretary of State's announcement of last month a further six could soon be shutting their doors.
	Last year, the sub-postmaster of Burstwick post office in my constituency announced that he would resign his post. The reason was that he was losing money and had to do a second job in order to subsidise his post office branch. He said that he was tired of swimming against the tide and predicted that many more post offices would close in rural areas if the Government carried on their policy of wilful neglect.
	Residents in Burstwick have now been told that they will have to visit a post office several miles away in a nearby village. That might be fine for a young couple with two cars parked in their drive, but for the elderly, who often live alone and have little or no access to transport, it is asking too much. Such examples are common and are doing untold damage to the social fabric of this country, especially in rural areas.
	The situation is likely to get worse. Sub-postmasters are voting with their feet. More and more of them are either going out of business or cutting their losses and leaving the profession entirely. When questioned in a recent MORI survey, 39 per cent. said that they could see no future whatsoever for their businesses. It is not hard to understand why. The average salary for a sub-postmaster is now only 1,000 a montha fall of6 per cent. since 2004.
	During the summer, I wrote to every sub-postmaster in my constituency. Every respondent told me that it had become harder for sub-post offices to survive since the Government came to power, and 94 per cent. said that the Government had failed to support rural post offices. One went so far as to say that Ministers had done everything that they possibly could to destroy the post office network. More and more sub-postmasters are facing the same dilemma.
	Try as they might, Ministers will not escape the blame for this crisis; it has taken place on their watch. In his statement to the House last month, the Secretary of State blamed everyone and everything for the current situation, but he categorically failed to mention the ruthless and persistent removal of Government business from the network, a point that was picked up by Labour Members. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said that it was a pity that the Secretary of State did not mention that the Government were taking business away from the Post Office. The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) greeted the statement by saying that it was very disappointing. The hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said:
	Given my right hon. Friend's statement...the future for stand-alone dedicated post office branches is bleak.[ Official Report, 14 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 1039.]
	That is the real understanding of the situation, even on the Labour Benches, where Members are not taken in by Front-Bench spin.
	Last year, the Government provided 150 million to the network through the social network subsidy, but in the same year they took 165 million out of the network in post office business. Five years ago, according to Adam Crozier, 60 per cent. of post office revenue came from Government business. In two years, that figure will be down to 10 per cent., yet the Secretary of State insults sub-postmasters and this House repeatedly by maintaining that it is nothing but changing circumstances. He says, It's the internet. It is not; it is the way in which the Government have systematically withdrawn business from the network that has affected its viability. That is why closures, which were happening under the Conservatives, have trebled under this Government.

Graham Stuart: The hon. Gentleman is persistent in his view. Like many Ministers and certain, although not all, Labour Members, he seems unable to see that there is a social value in what the post office network provides, and social value is what Government spending is for. We pay taxes so that the Government can provide services. That is why we have people coming in to look after the elderly in their homes. That is why successive Governments have sought to maintain a post office network.
	The question is whether the Secretary of State's statement last month provided a vision, gave stability and created a robust situation in which sub-postmasters can invest. The truth is that it did not. What we have is the continuing managed decline ofthe network, with the exception of the welcome announcement on the Post Office card account, an issue to which I will return. Conservative Members have campaigned long and hard for that, and it would be good to see the Government put their hand up and say that they have listened to the arguments put forward by the Conservatives and accepted that it will continue, if indeed it will.
	Does the Secretary of State support Conservative proposals to give sub-post offices greater freedoms to offer a wider range of commercial products? The answer would appear to be no. Does he envisage local authorities offering more council services through the post office? Nothing substantial has been promised. Does he want post offices to be given full access to working with carriers other than the Royal Mail? We appear not to have an answer. We have heard almost nothing on these important issues to try to give stability and a framework within which business could invest. All that people in rural areas can expect is a visit from a van for a couple of hours every week.
	The Government's position is that there are no guarantees that closures will be capped at 2,500. The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) offered the Secretary of State the opportunity to make a clear statement that the Government intend to maintain the size of the network. No guarantee was made.
	We have heard no guarantees that the Post Office card account will continue to be provided in post offices. There was indrawn breath in the House when I suggested that sending out the message to people that it was continuing and they could relax and plan on that basis, even though it might not go through the post office network at all, was a deceit, especially for sub-postmasters, 10 per cent. of whose income comes from the POCA. Perhaps I used unparliamentary language, but I have heard nothing from Ministers to reassure me that sub-postmasters will be able to rely on that money coming in.
	We also have no guarantees that post offices will be freer to compete for business. There are no guarantees at all. The situation is far from one of stability and certainty in the post office network. Instead, the post office bikerather like myself in the summer going round my constituency from village to villagemay easily lose its balance and fall in a ditch unless the Government get a proper grasp on the situation and listen to further arguments from Front-Bench Conservative spokesmen, the Government of whom the post office network will have to wait for in anticipation.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am grateful that I have caught your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I had not intended to speak in the debate, although as I represent one of the largest rural constituencies in the south of England, rural sub-post offices are extremely important, especially as the situation comes on top of a range of closures in rural areas. I am delighted to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) and for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) because they used the time that will not be available to me to describe in graphic detail the desperately important nature of a post office in a rural area. I was especially struck by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, when she said that if a rural sub-post office closes, elderly people, especially those without a caras is the case in many rural constituencies, my constituency has no public transportoften have to rely on the charity of neighbours to allow them to collect their benefits and access the services that such sub-post offices provide.
	It was disappointing that the Secretary of State did not have a greater vision of what he wanted from the rural sub-post office network. He had nothing to offer to House. Given that he was making a major speech on rural sub-post offices, I would have thought that he would be able to provide greater certainty. I do not envy the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), for having to wind up the debate. I hope that he will be able to provide greater certainty in his speech. There is no doubt that if the access criteria in the consultation paper are applied to my constituency, nearly three quarters of its rural sub-post offices could be closed, because the criteria are based on averages, not absolute figures.
	I thought that there was a huge difference between the speech made by the Secretary of State and that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan). One speech was a breath of fresh air that espoused what we wanted to hear: a situation in which sub-post offices are allowed to thrive.
	If I were an already struggling sub-postmaster or postmistress who had listened to the debate, I would be profoundly depressed. Hon. Members have mentioned that 39 per cent. of sub-postmasters and postmistresses think that their business has no future. That is very bad for morale. I would like to think that we were managing a thriving business that was going forward. The Secretary of State finished his speech by addressing the question of closing post offices, but I want post offices to be opening. Indeed, one or two post offices have opened in my constituency. There has been new, innovative thinking. Post offices have opened in clubs, pubs and on farmsin whatever other facilities are available in rural areas. Indeed, the same thing is happening in suburban areas. The closure of a post office in the suburbs causes as much hardship as a closure in a rural area. The Government need to come forward with a lot more innovative thinking. I disagree with the Secretary of State because I think that Post Office Ltd should treat its network more like a franchise, with a basic range of services that has to be provided and an additional range of servicesa pick and mix rangethat individual sub-postmasters could choose to provide, with their expertise and knowledge of their local area, so that they could make a profit and encourage customers to come to the sub-post office.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton said, the Government could facilitate the availability of a range of extra services. When I intervened on the hon. Member for Richmond Park, I said that one of my constituents had written to me to say that although he would like to buy his television licence in a post office, he had to go across the road to buy it from a pub, even though he had never been in the pub in his life and did not wish to go there. He wanted to buy the licence from the post office and the post office wanted to sell it, but it was not allowed to do so. The Government could have done something about that daft state of affairs, or at least made more of a fuss about it.
	First of all, the sub-post office could become thehub for all Government services. It could provide information about them, and that would bring people through the door. It is all very well to say that people are choosing not to use sub-post offices, but that is bound to happen if the range of services available is getting smaller and smaller.
	Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton said, the Government should encourage local councils to allow people to use sub-post offices for their services. There is no reason why people should not be able to perform council tax and housing benefit transactions at sub-post offices, or why a greater range of financial services could not be made available. My hon. Friend was right to say that the Post Office should look at its contract carefully, with a view to allowing an individual office to provide whatever services it chose. For example, there would be nothing wrong with an office contracting with a local bank some distance away to provide some of that bank's services.
	Thirdly, we live in a changing electronic world, and there is no reason why sub-post offices could not provide various telecoms and IT services. Elderly people may not be able to affordor may not wantto have computers and broadband in their homes, but they could use their local sub-post office to send or receive emails, for example. In addition, for foreign telephone calls, it may well be cheaper to use a Post Office telephone that operates over the internet than it would be to use an ordinary domestic telephone. The Government should encourage sub-post offices to offer a range of such services.
	I want to give the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) plenty of time to wind up the debate, so I shall end by saying that we need to provide some certainty for the sub-post office network. The Government should announce, as soon as possible, that they have reached a definite decision on the Post Office card account. That would provide a great deal of certain income to struggling businesses. The longer the uncertainty goes on, the more post offices will close.
	I hopeindeed, I am surethat that is not the Government's intention, but we need as many thriving post offices as possible. In particular, we must make sure that the average age of those who operate them ceases to rise as it has done recently. People feel that they are unable to retire, so we need to encourage young people coming out of school or university to consider setting up as sub-postmasters or sub-postmistresses and establishing thriving businesses in rural areas. If such businesses were to combine with others in the provision of services, there is no reason why the network should not thrive, to everyone's benefit.

Charles Hendry: This brief debate has been interesting and well informed, and it has dealt with one of the most important issues affecting hon. Members today. It began with a clear analysis of the decline of the post office network from my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan). He set out the challenges that it faces, and described how the Government were wrong to try to manage the network's decline instead of developing the new business opportunities that might sustain it.
	My hon. Friend asked the Secretary of State some very clear questions, but the right hon. Gentleman did not answer them. My hon. Friend asked for an assurance that more than 2,500 sub-post offices would not close, but there was no reply. He asked how large a town would have to be to merit its own post office, but we remain none the wiser. He asked whether POCA2 would offer a greater range of services. That question was endorsed by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), the Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee, but it was not answered.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton also asked for the timetable for tenders for the Post Office card account replacement programme, but we did not get that information. Most importantly of all, he even asked for the date when a decision would be made about the future structure of the Royal Mail, but not a single word was given in reply.
	For those of us who have seen the Secretary of State working in the House over some years, it was perhaps one of his most remarkable performances, because he looked tired and disinterested. Perhaps his mind had moved on to his new job, where he hopes to be in a new environment as Chancellor of the Exchequer and to see his old Department abolished. That is not too surprising because, apart from the remarkable speech of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), not a single speaker on the Labour Benches offered any support to the Government's position. We are talking about one of the most sure-footed Cabinet Ministers, but the Secretary of State looked extraordinarily uncomfortable in defence of his policy today.
	The right hon. Gentleman says that he wants to encourage new business in the Post Office, but he simply will not take the steps necessary to make it happen. He says that there are perhaps only two options: to maintain the network as it is without a single closure and at a high level of subsidy; or, alternatively, to reduce the network and reduce the subsidy as the Government have proposed. What he has completely ignored is the third way, which I would have thought would be obvious to him. One would have thought that he would want to explore the amazing range of new business opportunities for post offices in order to make more of them economically viable so that more can stay in business with less subsidy to keep them that way.
	I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not in his place to hear what I am saying, as we had a remarkably interesting insight into Darling economics [Interruption.] Here he comes, so I will wait for him to resume his place. I am more than willing to go over the earlier part of my speech again, so that he can hear what he missed. We had an astonishing insight into Darling economics: if one post office closes because the sub-postmaster wishes to take a redundancy package, the Post Office may instruct another post office nearby to close and transfer to the new location.
	What the right hon. Gentleman is saying essentially is that the Government would tell a private business, which may have been operating for years in a particular location, serving its community and understanding its customers, that it must close and move to a new location in a community that it does not know, losing all the consumer good will built up over time. What if the postmaster declines to do so? What if he says that he wants to stay where he is and carry on serving the community? It is quite clear from what the Secretary of State said that the postmaster may be told that he may not do so, as his branch may be closed and a new person found to set up the other branch.
	At the heart of the debate is the extraordinary amount of affection that all our constituents have for the post office network. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) mentioned it in her speech and almost every intervention and speech by a Back Bencher referred to people's enormous affection for it. Yet we all know that it goes beyond that: it is not just about affection, but how we can bring new business into the post office network. The hon. Member for Richmond Park spoke about post offices becoming a hub for packages that couriers cannot deliver, but she went on to ruin her argument with an economically illiterate funding arrangement, whereby the Post Office would be separated from the Royal Mail, which would be part-privatised and the funds used to subsidise the separated-off post office network.
	We have heard significant discussion about the Post Office card account. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton, introducing the debate, spoke about the near compulsion on people to have their pensions paid into bank accounts. The hon. Member for Richmond Park talked about the letter sent to people when they retire, urging them not to go to the Post Office, but to use the banks instead. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), who has campaigned strongly on these issues, rightly said that the Government must bear some responsibilityindeed, the lion's share of itfor the problem.
	The Secretary of State says that the use of bank accounts rather than the Post Office has been the result of a long-term change, but when we were in government, we never put the same sort of pressure on people to use the banks. People did not get the same letters then, and they were not rung upas elderly, frail and vulnerable people often are todayand told not to use the Post Office, but their banks. Under the present Government, we have seen an unparalleled level of pressure applied on people to put their pensions into a bank account rather than into the Post Office.
	I am not surprised that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes is not in her place to hear the wind-up speeches or any responses to her remarkable 22-minute speech. She started off by saying that we should close post offices, albeit none in Cleethorpes, and then developed an argument on why post office closures are right. I do not agree with her, but she is a brave person, with a majority of 2,000, to take that position. I hope that her comments will be widely publicised in her local newspapersin fact, in a spirit of good will, I am prepared to help her by sending a copy of her speech to her local press and pointing out what she is saying on behalf of her constituents about why their local post offices should be closed.
	The hon. Lady highlighted other issues, such as the fact that British Telecom bills do not tell customers how they can pay their bills at a post officebut has she done a single thing about it? Has she ever written to British Telecom to point out the omission and to ask it to change its practices? Hers was an extraordinarily weak speechone that was apparently designed to shore up the Government's position, but failed to do so.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) took us on a cycling tour of his constituency and explained how the post office is the hub of every community. Were I to go on a cycling tour of my constituency, the doctor's surgery would be the important hub that I sought in every community. He spoke about the social roles that post offices play and highlighted the way in which many sub-postmasters are being ground down and demoralised by the lack of long-term vision for a post office network.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) summarised effectively the sense of disappointment that all of us felt at the Secretary of State's lacklustre speech and the great contrast between that and the vision set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton, who is indeed a one-man think tank on the post office, with a raft of ideas for its future.
	Some 5,000 post offices have been closed since the Labour Government came to power. That means that, in 10 years, taking into account the announcements made in December, 40 per cent. of the post office network will have closed under Labour. That is a national issue. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said, closures affect urban areas every bit as much as rural areas. In Wales, 250 post offices have closed; in my constituency, a third have closed in the past five years.
	We know that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses for the work they do in serving their communities. They deserve better than they are getting from the Government. The Government's decision on the future of the network has been based on how many post offices they think they can get away with closing, rather than on a real business case or an understanding of what consumers want and need. The Secretary of State's vision is to have fewer post offices providing fewer services to fewer people.
	A month after the statement, far too many questions are still unanswered. A raft of parliamentary questions were tabled following last month's statement, but the Minister for Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy, who is one of the most delightful men in government, has been unable or unwilling to say what proportion of closures would be urban or rural. He cannot give a precise figure for the social network subsidy, which implies that it could well be less than the present 150 million a year. He cannot say how much will be invested in improving Crown post offices or how many Crown post offices will close in the next three years.
	The Minister has made no assessment of the likely environmental impact of closures, despite the Government's professed commitment to avoid unnecessary car journeys in order to protect the environment. Whatever happened to joined-up thinking? He cannot give us details of the level of support for mobile post offices. We still do not know whether press reports that the Post Office wanted to close 7,000 of the 14,000 sub-post offices were true. He cannot tell us what a local community would have to do to avert a closureindeed, he does not even tell us whether local communities will have a say.
	We are seeing a massive missed opportunity. Worst of all, the Government's policy does not recognise that the problems caused by the closure of the post office often result in the last shop in a community closing as well. The debate is not only about our post offices; it is about the whole of the communities in which so many of our constituents live. The Government should be announcing ways to develop the Post Office, allowing it work with carriers other than Royal Mail. They should end the restrictive practices and enable the problems of unfair competition to be tackled. They should be working with local councils to encourage them to offer more council services through post offices. Conservative councils are already doing that by encouraging people to pay their rent and access other council services at post office counters. We should be doing more to give post offices the flexibility to offer a wider range of businesses services than is currently permitted, and we should be considering imaginative approaches such as those employed in Wales, where the Welsh Conservatives in the Assembly have announced plans to support local post offices through help with business rates and expansion of the post office development fund.
	The debate has highlighted once again the paucity of the Government's thinking on the issue. We need a real long-term vision for the future of the post office, not the Prime Minister blaming the consumer alone; the Government have been responsible for many of the problems but they have failed to come up with a vision. We need that vision. We need a long-term structure, but we do not have one and as a result we are destined for more years of uncertainty, decline and dissatisfaction.

Stephen O'Brien: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was contacted this afternoon by my constituent, Michael Walker, whose son was killed by one of the fugitives who have absconded from this open prison. In 2002, the judge was so appalled that he sentenced Gary Smith to10 years for manslaughter with no parole. Less than five years later, he has absconded from an open prison. That has left my constituent and his family in perilous fear about where this man might now be, as well as dredging up appalling memories of what they had to suffer at the hands of a murderer who is now free.

Bernard Jenkin: It is a great pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to raise the issue of rail level crossing safety in my constituency. I am grateful to the Minister for attending the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) is present as well, and I should be delighted if he made a contribution. I am grateful to the Minister for giving his permission for that.
	The question of rail level crossings and their safety is a vexed one. According to a note from the Library, in 2005 there were 7,674 level crossings in Great Britain, of which 79 per cent. were unprotected. I am concerned about the protected crossings. Some 1,623 crossings had manual or automatic gates or barriers, most commonly where vehicles crossed the railway, and there were 253 manual gates operated by railway employees. It is the demise of such crossings in my constituency that gave rise to this debate.
	I have been trying to establish the different safety records of different types of level crossing. The accident statistics are thankfully very sparse. For that reason they do not tell us much, except that manual gates operated by railway employees caused precisely zero fatalities and zero injuries in 2005. By comparison with the record of other crossing systems, that is outstanding. Other kinds of crossing produce casualtiesboth injuries and fatalities.
	I turn to a document entitled, Development of a programme of level crossing research to improve railway safety in Great Britain, produced by the Rail Safety and Standards Board on 16 February 2004. It states at the outset:
	Level Crossing Risk is likely to become the largest category of train accident risk on the National Rail network in Great Britain. It is also a significant risk for road users and pedestrians.
	That is not to say that the risk from level crossings is growing; other safety aspects on the railway are improving, so that then becomes the biggest single issue that the railway bodies have to deal with in addressing rail safety.
	There are some useful statistics in the document giving some assessment of the relative risk posed by different kinds of crossing. On page 6 of the document, it is stated:
	Risk levels depend to a great extent on the type of crossing protection in place.
	A chart shows the equivalent fatalities per year for different types of crossing. It shows that manned gates or barriers offer a risk that is equivalent to one fatality per year, whereas automatic half-barriers or automatic open locally monitored barriers offer significantly increased risk.
	I suspect that those statistics are based solely on fatalities, so I have been looking for other sources to demonstrate the relative safety of different types of crossing, because if we are to remove manned crossings we need to have a better idea of their relative safety.
	I turn to a more recent document: the Rail Safety and Standards Board document entitled, Level crossing safety performance report June 2006. In chart 14 on page 22, that document shows that manually controlled gates offer by far the lowest risk of near misses, particularly compared with manually controlled barriers protected by closed circuit television and operated remotely. It is difficult to describe those findings, but as I have drawn the chart to the Minister's attention I hope that he will be able to respond to it.
	The particular challenge that my constituency faces is that three manned sets of gatesthose at Alresford, Thorrington and Great Bentleyare set to be replaced by alternative crossing systems. It is widely understood among the public that they will be replaced by automatic barriersbarriers that are tripped by the train approaching the level crossing. I fully accept that that might not be the case and that Network Rail is, as is its obligation, looking at alternative systemsof monitored automatic barriers, or even at barriers operated by remote control under CCTV surveillance.